Listening Post

I did this design for TOPYS in China for a New Year’s money envelope. It’s the year of the dog coming up and the theme was “kiss”, which is what it says in gold. You can get it here (shop and site in Chinese).

We visited your website and found some fantastic posts in your blog, for example, some interesting ideas from sandwiches. So we would like to invite you to share 6-8 kinds of food inspiration or funny food metaphors in your life and works.

Food can represent many facets of consumption and sustainability but I think it depicts people’s fears and desires best of all. Our experiences in life are taken in through our senses and food can describe or act as a metaphor for every human interaction.

Recently I started making fake condiments packets and other small items that combine different drugs with different foods. Just an exaggeration of how processed food works. Here are 6 ingredients, additives, or foods that keep my curiosity.

Vanilla – Spices can surprise your expectations and change the chemistry of your idea, if you’re willing to take the occasional risk. Balance requires experimentation and restraint. I think that holds true for most things: whatever you do is more about the small choices you make while doing it and less about your initial idea or the end product. You are the process and not the product, the result is just the end of the cycle.

Vanilla is a fruit pod from an orchid and the smell of vanilla is so successful that most of what we use is fake. The commercial food world is covered with this approximation of a plant part’s smell and taste. Possibly because of its similarity to mother’s milk. It’s a fascinating circumstance.

Mayonnaise – Some people don’t like mayonnaise but I think it improves a whole number of foods. I don’t see what’s not to like: it’s tangy fat. With french fries or fried chicken? It’s the best.

Vinegar – Rot is the most interesting thing. Even the foods we don’t think of as having rotten starts, processed cheese, breads, beers, chocolate, etc., came from the process of rot at some point. Not to mention soy sauce, yogurt, kimchi, wine… the list goes on.

White vinegar is the best thing to clean your house with and it’s also very good in some soups. Really opens the nose.

Cola – I have a book of short essays in which I use cola as a metaphor for the connection between mind and body. That the head of foam represents habitual thinking (bubbles of memories and projections colliding together) and sits on the substance that is the body (the vehicle for the head, the mysterious knowledge of the physical world). What I really love about cola is the combination of neroli, cinnamon, vanilla, lime, nutmeg, and coriander. I love Coca Cola so much I don’t drink it anymore because I can’t stop. The first sip is the best. It burns all the way down. It’s like a drinkable acid that strips your insides clean.

Honey – Lasts forever. Found in Egyptian tombs. Made by social insects. That are all dying. Clover honey is the best.

Chocolate – Chocolate is hard bean paste with sugar. Isn’t that weird? The history of chocolate is thick and complicated, just like how the taste is thick and complicated. It was a currency, ritual, religion, medicine, then a symbol of international trade and power, war, slavery, now a highly refined product whose raw material is outpacing the price of gold. All of that makes a candy.

I grew up watching my dad learn to work with chocolate, a long trial and error process of complicated variables, to become highly skilled. If you love it it’s worth doing–and that legacy is just a story. That’s what chocolate taught me.

Listening Post

I finished up this illustration for Luppolo Brewing’s new Quattro Stagioni membership program during the weekend and learned up to six Italian words. Turns out that Quattro Stagioni is more than just a species of pizza too.

I did think about pizza when sketching this out, with the year being sliced up into delicious quarters. Spent too long looking at pictures of the Malfa coast while trying to figure out how to distill it.

Listening Post

“…And gather sea shells and drift-wood And know the thrill of loneliness And lose all sense of time And be free.” I love this album.

Having enjoyed doing them so much I wanted to move them to their own home. I do wish I had a bit more time to dedicate to it, both to promote it and the artists interviewed as well as to send it to the endless supply of candidates I’d love to hear from. Growth issues really, which isn’t bad in and of itself provided it doesn’t truncate the magic of the thing while it attempts to extend itself.

In order to keep the tempo a little more chop-chop I’m no longing waxing poetic preceding the interviews. After all, I do have this forum to do that if I really want to, and the work and replies do speak for themselves.

A blonde has stopped six lanes of heavy traffic by casually jaywalking through it in the middle of day. People are stopped in their paths, in their cars and on the sidewalks, watching a situation that does not confine itself to traffic. Hence people’s attentions are spilling out over the street and things are, momentarily, not even crawling down the road. The blonde is a dog. Tada!

I’m at the intersection a block away–trapped by the lights–pacing the corner like it’s an enclosure. I’m watching this idiot waltz further and further away. My knees are starting to whimper since they hate running. Everything except my mind is thankful for this momentary rest.

This is not my dog. I don’t know the dog. It’s a neighbor’s dog that decided to jump off of a third story balcony when the owner went out. (I think.) I just walked into the situation when leaving my house. I didn’t see anything but the results.

“It’s around, it’s walking”. That’s good news I think. Maybe it’s in shock? Does anyone know its name? People are on phones calling Dog Catchers or whatever. Lots of incredulous faces, mine included. It’s not a short distance, not a small dog I hear.

I see the dog over someone’s shoulder going down the alley alone. It’s average sized, average weight, some breed with no tail. It’s moving smoothly, and with intent, so I lost sight of it quickly. “It’s down the alley! It’s moving towards the other mouth of the alley!”

Now I’m the only person I can see that is trying to catch this dog.

I don’t think catching an unknown dog with your hands is a great idea so I stop inside and grab a leash (I have a dog too) and bolt down the alley. I spot it a couple blocks later in the outside lane of a busy street. Running with traffic, like it’s a vehicle. Nearby drivers are slowing down in safety and my view isn’t great. I can only see it the dog in still images between the cars. I run to the intersection whistling Chariots of Fire.

I’m out of breath. The dog is wandering down the median and I squeeze the leash in my hand like a very flat, very flappy stress ball. I also squeeze my other hand, which is full of chihuahua-sized treats (I got those inside too), and now my hand is spicy and oily. This makes me extra worried for some reason.

I’m watching it turn a corner when the second light finally changes and I can go back to destroying my body with physical activity. I explode at the green and move as fast as possible but it now has a minutes worth of a head start and double the amount of legs I have.

I get to the corner and I can’t see anything except one choice in five directions. There are no clues, just driveways. I’m looking at people’s faces as my compass. Two or more heads facing in the same direction would be my new sense of true north. No one is looking around.

There is another busy street ahead, I run to the corner and nearly get run over by an elderly woman using very bright white knuckles under thick gold rings to drive her sedan. (One with a very spacious bright white welted leather interior.) I gather my senses and wonder how I’m standing in the parking lot of McDonald’s all of a sudden. The air smells fat and good; I guess that’s how.

A block away from me going north is a dog park. I head there thinking that, I don’t know, this dog is lost: it will head there for advice or something. This is, I think, a wrong choice. A human choice and not a dog’s choice. But it’s all I have so I go on so I take it. I consider what Cesar Millan might do. Unfortunately I don’t have his knowledge or experience.

The park is empty, save for a couple birds. I sit down and let my disappointment char the air with audible breathing. I’m scouring the horizon with my eyes my with increasingly small effort. Pelagic cormorants are diving. Seagulls pick at the lawn since they can’t irritate it any other way. My lungs hurt. I rub my knees. Cesar Millan’s teeth are soooo white. Just like the inside of that lady’s car. “Pack Leaders”, feh!

I walk back home with an empty leash realizing that I, too, don’t feel like I deserve any type of treat for services rendered. I smell like cured meat, which isn’t so bad. I think about the dog in traffic, the only thing in moving in a frozen, glinting seam of glass and metal, unhurried and invasive. No idea its freedom at that moment is the focal point for so much speculation and attention.

I don’t know what happened to the dog. I came home and washed my hands.

My knees want to know why I chased the dog. I have to tell them I don’t know. My knees are still upset.

Listening

I walked into the elevator today and it smelled a lot like someone was just moving large blocks of marzipan around. It’s what I imagine the spring air in Lubeck or Palermo must have smelled like if you happened to be strolling around during the 17th century.

I walked into a kind of cheap, beautiful ghost, basically. An impression of a person who was just there. And there I am: standing in the result of someone else’s choices. For better or worse I like it.

I want to see the cheapest aldehydes you buy so I know what you long for. I want to know how you combine fragrance and money. I want to see your spice rack so I know who you are. I want to see the alchemy you’ve made between the inside and the outside. How do you combine or separate fragrance and experience?

I’m closing my eyes for a sec (I’m only going one floor here) and I think of almonds. Great Victorian table centerpieces and Swedish princess cakes. Life/death: the Biblical luz blooming with either early old age or long life depending on how you read it. March-pane and passover, marzipan and London Drugs. Marzipan as medicine. Sugar as a spice. Hanseatic Germany. Cyanide and Richard Kuklinski. Hungary and my grandfather and WWII.

Mostly I wonder about who brought this ghost into the elevator. Do they know who or what it could stand for at another place in time? Do they wear almonds for themselves or for someone else?